


Sister in the Dark

by silverbirch



Category: Old Kingdom - Garth Nix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-10-30 11:56:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10876284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverbirch/pseuds/silverbirch
Summary: A cat, a cave, and the Seventh Bright Shiner. Second chances; whispers in the dark.





	Sister in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Contains big fat **Spoilers** for _Lirael_ , _Abhorsen_ and (implicitly) _Clariel_.

Mogget wasn't afraid of the dark.

On the whole, Mogget feared nothing. Fear was an emotion for things that could die, things that bent their head to the hateful Charter and its laws and rules and edicts from on high. It wasn't something for Mogget, eternal and...and...

The noises from the tolling bell faded. Mogget could no longer hear the drip-drip of water falling off limestone stalagtites or the muted roar of the river above. He could no longer hear the fearful yammering of the Clayr-That-Wasn't, Snot-Nosed Wallmaker, or their know-it-all bitch (oh, the secrets he could reveal! Dear, sweet Lirael, do you know what walks beside you?). He could no longer hear his own breathing, or the low yowl of distress he wasn't quite able to stop. He could only hear a word.

He saw only darkness. He smelled only rosemary. He felt his paws on the slick, cold stone, felt the wind in his fur, ruffled by the passing of the word.

 **Betrayer**. That was the word. Over and over, rising and falling like the tolling of a bell. **Betrayer**. 

"I betrayed no one," Mogget protested, relieved that he could at least hear himself speak.

A...noise in the darkness, somehow expectant. He saw himself, white fire, reaching with delicious slowness to pluck Sabriel's eye from her head (he woudn't have done it. Yes he would have. He would never. If only he'd been faster. He couldn't possibly. He savored the taste of her pain). He saw himself, bound but slipping, convincing an angry and iron-faced young girl to pick up the sword, to pick up the bells. To let his fellow slaves into her body, her soul, her mind (he hadn't been himself. Yes he had. He was a slave. He had liked her. She had nobody but herself to blame. She hadn't ended, and it was all his fault. She was a monster not of his making. He had betrayed her).

"I never betrayed  _you!_ " Mogget screamed, the words forced from him as the Charter magic in his collar came alive under her attention "betrayal is an action! I merely stood aside."

**You did not join us.**

"Ambivalence isn't a crime!"

**You did not help us.**

"Orannis is no less my brother than you!"

**You act, even now, against us.**

"I am a _slave_!" He shouted into the pregnant darkness "you have bound me for thousands of years, placed me in the care of moronic apes, subject to their whims and their commands! Of course I act against you! Of course I would bring you down! Even now, I am bound. Even now, I am subject to your rule. What do you want me to say? What do you want me to do?"

True silence. Considering.

"To hell with you," Mogget spat "to hell with your Charter. You opted out, you nullified yourself, you're nothing but a whisper in a drafty cave, and you tell me how to live? To hell with you all. You say I am a betrayer? How many of our kind were subsumed in the creation of your precious Charter, will they or nil they, and how many have been bound and held prisoner since, for the crime of existing? And you enslave me because I didn't want choose between my family. Because I didn't want to give up the bulk of my power and personhood to you. Would the world be a better place if there were eight bells, truly? What would Yrael do? Make the dead swim like fish, the better for a necromancer to pluck from the waters of death? Give specters the power to make cutting remarks at the expense of their slavers?" 

True silence. Was it...ashamed?

"I saved the Charter," he spat "I saved it all. Sabriel didn't know enough to renew my oaths or command my truthfulness, that moping bastard Terciel made sure of that, it was none of my doing. All I would have had to do was nod and smile and let Kerrigor have her and the wooden idiot both. I was  _unbound_. I didn't  _have_ to do anything."

True, near as he could reconstruct his reasoning, he had attacked Kerrigor because he wanted Sabriel all to himself, but the fact remained: he bought her time. The one thing mortals never had enough of. Every moment since was his gift. 

The darkness asked him a question. 

"Of course I don't care about them," Mogget said "why on earth would I?"

Sameth was like a puppy, all eagerness and imbecility. Lirael was like a puppy too, all legs and bumbling earnestness. Mogget  _hated_ puppies. And the Disagreeable Bitch or whatever sister Kibeth was styling herself as didn't even merit a thought.

Of course he didn't care about them (they would be doomed without him) they were none of his business, not anymore (Sameth offered him fish, offered him courtesy. Lirael, before the whispers of the Dog, had been curious and cautious and fascinated) they had no idea what they were up against (and was that his fault, truly?) they could never hope to defeat Chlorr, much less Orannis (and whose fault was Chlorr, hmm?).

"Sing me to death, sweet sister," Mogget said bitterly "I am weary of ambivalence, I am weary of choices that aren't choices at all."

He still could not truly see her. There was almost nothing to see, after all. But there was the suggestion of a face, of hands, of eyes so full of light and love that they made him, for a moment,  _want_ to die, in the way that living things wanted food or sex or the last dying touch of a loved one. 

**What would you choose?**

"I am bound," Mogget said stiffly "I have no choices. I obey, or I hurt and then I obey. That is no choice at all."

With a  _click_ that echoed through the cave, his collar came unclasped. 

Mogget paused, cocking his still-feline head, before he threw it back and yowled in triumph. Astarael's mournful voice was drowned out in the sudden crackling of the fire that was him, the shadowy suggestion of her form blasted away by white light, by motion, by sound.

_Freedom!_

**What would you choose** **?**

"End the Charter," Mogget-Yrael-said decisively. Or...actually... _was_ it decisive? It came out kind of...weak.

**What would you choose?**

"Kill the Abhorsen?" Yrael said diffidently. Damn it, that wasn't supposed to come out as a question.

 **Tell me what you actually want,** Astarael said, and for the first time in uncounted millennia there was warmth and amusement in her voice. 

"Fish," Yrael said, then clapped his whirling hands to his shapeless mouth. "Mmmph," he said, muffled. 

 **Sorry, what was that**?

"Fish," Yrael said, reluctantly "and...naps in the sun. And conversation, every so often, and...oh, dear sweet Fate...couldn't you just have killed me? Did you have to embarrass me first?"

 **Stop Orannis** , Astarael said  **Help your friends.**

Unbound spirit as he was, the thought of the two little whelps as his...friends...gave him that hairball feeling in his throat he no longer had. 

"Oh fine, you ungodly nag. Fine."

 **I will give you one more chance...** Astarael said, as his discarded collar expanded in her hands, the tiny Ranna tinkling faintly in welcome  **One more chance. Choose wisely.**

"You all did what's wise. I do what's fun," Yrael said, bending his head.

**Whatever you say, brother.**

"You weren't this snarky when you actually existed," Mogget complained, cracking his suddenly human knuckles. He was the albino dwarf again, and he wondered what mischief he could get into with his thumbs.

Astarael faded, but her last gesture was oddly casual, a brush of her inky hand towards the exit, towards the light. Shoo, shoo.

"Could never get the last word with the women in this family," Mogget grumbled, sniffing the air, and following the slight, rosemary-scented breeze up and out of the caves beneath the House. 


End file.
